


In the End

by Royal_Prussian_Fox



Category: Pocket Monsters SPECIAL | Pokemon Adventures
Genre: Angst, F/M, Not Canon Compliant, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 11:48:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22431817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Royal_Prussian_Fox/pseuds/Royal_Prussian_Fox
Summary: There is only one thing that Ruby knows for certain.
Relationships: Odamaki Sapphire | Sapphire Birch/Ruby
Comments: 11
Kudos: 29





	In the End

**Author's Note:**

> I was in the middle of writing something completely different when the plot bunnies hijacked my project, and it instead became this. If only the power of the plot bunny could be harnessed to power the world...!
> 
> Definitely not canon-compliant. Also definitely not fluffy.
> 
> Comments always appreciated.

From the very first time they met, she should've known better. They couldn't have been more unalike, the two of them: he, a boyish boy who stomped over flowers when he ran; she, a girly girl who stopped to pick them. He was rambunctious, and eager, and he already knew everything there was to know about adventure. She loved dolls and dress-up, knew how to make Pokémon look cute, knew how to make herself look cute. They couldn't have been more different, and yet she followed him everywhere in those early days when they first met.

She should've known better than to go along with him. She shouldn't have even been interested, not in the suggestions of a boy who leaped before he looked, who didn't even know how to look. But she was. She went with him, as they scrambled barefoot through grassy fields and poked at wriggling worms and clambered up stout trees. She went with him, even after a Salamence dropped from the sky and shook the air with its wings. She went with him, and so she was there at the very moment that the Salamence tore a bloody gash into the side of his head.

She should've known better than to cry. People got hurt all the time. Cuts, and scrapes, and bruises. Such is life — people get hurt — and Ruby, who at the age of five hadn't yet learned all the ways he could make people hurt, on that day, learned a new one. He learned how to tear holes just as easily as a dragon's claws, learned that he could make girly girls in frilly dresses cry just as surely as he could scare a dragon off, with a scar in his forehead to show for it, a scar that would not go away for as long as he lived.

They did not see each other for years after that, with the ocean between them, but he did not forget about her, even though he knew he had hurt her, and she did not forget about him, even though she should’ve known better than to remember. But life has a way of reordering priorities. She soon found herself occupied with helping her father’s Pokémon research, and he soon found himself occupied with wishing he had a father close enough to help. (It was done out of love, Ruby would discover too much later. Ruby would discover a great many things too much later.)

And after the years had passed, when they had all but forgotten that they were only an ocean apart, when Ruby had accidentally found his way into her secret base after running away from so many things, she should've known better than to strike up a deal with someone who was, by then, essentially a stranger. All the badges in eighty days; all the ribbons in eighty days. Each of them would set out across Hoenn to accomplish that goal, and that, by extension, practically guaranteed that their paths would cross again and again. It made no sense. He had insulted her to her face, called her a Pokémon, called her a barbarian, called her provincial (and even if she didn't know what that last one meant, the tone with which he'd said it was more than sufficient to convey the meaning). He'd done everything he could to drive her off, and she'd only stood her ground and insisted that she'd be the one to win their bet.

She should’ve known better than to ferry him halfway across the sea. But she was on a mission, and was determined to see it through. That Ruby had been the one to meet Steven only momentarily deterred her. The letter must be delivered, and she was proud, but not too proud to drag him along. (Ruby was too proud.) And she ended up keeping her promise, right up until the end of the world, handing Steven the letter because it was her duty to see the task through, a duty that Steven had offered and Ruby had rejected.

She should've known better than to forgive him. He'd loudly proclaimed his total indifference to the fate of her home — had no opinion as to whether its people should be drowned or burned alive. Of course she was furious. She had every right to be. It would have been uncharacteristic if she hadn't been. And then they journeyed together to the bottom of the sea because they were the only two who could, and she forgave him. (It would have been uncharacteristic if she hadn't.) She forgave him, even though she was hurt by his words, even though Ruby's words were nothing if not hurtful, even though Ruby had grown so very accustomed to knowing exactly which words he could wield like a knife. (Such is life — people get hurt.)

It was while they were on Mirage Island that they discovered their connection — not to each other, but to the pair of primordial creatures that were forever at war — and that could not possibly be something to ignore, even though she should've known better than to try to. The symbolism seemed perfectly apt, to Ruby's mind: He, tied as if by string to the creature with dominion over the land; and she, tied as if by string to the creature with dominion over the sea. Red and blue; yin and yang; the obverse and the reverse of the same coin, that for all of their proximity to each other, were forever fated to gaze in opposing directions.

She confessed to him, and if nothing else, she should've known better than that. Because, what was Ruby supposed to do now? Their training together had been meaningful, and now it took on new meaning; they had slept comfortably barely a meter apart, and now Ruby could not imagine sleeping comfortably barely a meter apart again. Everything was known, and then suddenly it wasn't. This was a new adventure, an unknown adventure, an adventure that Ruby knew nothing of, except for the ending. How things ended — how things had always ended — that was the one thing he already knew, and so he locked her in Wallace's car, where she could do nothing but watch his body become burned and beaten, to match the scar he carried with him, always.

She should've known better than to believe his lie. He'd lied to her before, about so many things. He lied about not knowing how to battle. He lied about Courtney, and lied about the orbs, and lied about the Pokémon that traveled through time. He lied about his lies, and so what was one more? Indeed, he could not recall the time after Mirage Island, he told her. He'd forgotten it entirely, conveniently, and with exceedingly plausible deniability. It was a bald-faced lie, complete and absolute, and she could do nothing but believe him, because Ruby would not change his mind. He had forgotten, he insisted, to both of them. And even if she didn't take it well (he could not blame her; could not, for so many reasons), Ruby, at least, did, because he existed at the intersection of white lies and half-truths, had lived there for so long that lying to others was routine and lying to himself had become the most natural thing in the world.

She should've known better than to wait. She was the unstoppable force and he was the immovable object, and Ruby was quite intent on proving just how immovable he could be. She was eternally indefatigable. But inertia was a powerful force. So was experience, and Ruby had learned long ago the art of telling a dishonest truth. He told himself that he relished her pestering questions and found enjoyment in her skeptical asides. Perhaps he did. Their banter was familiar, and familiar was comfortable. He dared not allow himself to yearn for something else, for anything else, convinced himself he did not even want it, because this way, he could not hurt her, except for every time that he did.

She arrived one day with someone that Ruby had never seen before hanging onto her arm, and she should've known better than to project her feelings onto someone else. She laughed, and she smiled, and she closed the distance between the two of them almost magnetically. But she was not happy. Ruby could tell this much, at least, because the years had taught him how her eyes twinkled when she finished climbing to the top of a tree; how she showed her teeth when she smiled, really smiled; how her real laugh was something booming and brassy and bold, and the petite giggle she now offered in its place was a laugh of discomfort, of doubt. Ruby knew exactly how much he liked her real laugh: he liked it more than anything else in the world, liked it more than anything, and could not find it in himself to tell her so.

The break-up was inevitable; she should've known better than to think otherwise. So was the next, and the one after that. And so it went and so it had always gone, for days and weeks and months and years, and maybe some part of Ruby thought that would always be the case, thought that up until the very day of the marriage. Ruby designed her dress, because that is what good friends with an eye for fashion do. He stayed up nights adjusting the seams to fit her shoulders (nearly broader than his). He spent hours widening the dress at the hips so that she could take the wide strides she was used to, because he knew that she hated how formal wear restricted her movement. He sewed on a sash of flowers, because she had always liked flowers, even as a child, even when wearing nothing but clothes crudely fashioned from blades of grass. The finished dress was a thing of beauty, probably Ruby's finest creation, if he allowed himself the honor — elegant, and beautiful, and perfect for this occasion, and no other occasion that Ruby would permit himself to think about.

She should've known better than to think that the dress would do anything but fit her perfectly. She stood in it, and gave a twirl in the mirror, and Ruby watched as the folds near her feet rippled like waves, exactly as he had envisioned them. She twirled again, seemingly for the fun of it, and she thanked him for making it, and thanked him for coming, and thanked him for lots of things, too many of which Ruby did not deserve thanks for; and Ruby told her so, told her that the dress only looked beautiful because its wearer was beautiful, told her that of course he'd attend her wedding, told her that he did not deserve her gratitude. (Out of everything, her gratitude was something he deserved least of all.)

At last, she turns to him, with a face that Ruby has not seen for years, the face that Ruby has never forgotten, and she asks, are you happy? There is no malice in the question, no judgment in her eyes. It is only a genuine question, from someone who has always been genuine, to someone who tells lies to himself so often that he has even come to believe them. (Does he truly believe them? Or is that also a lie?) It is the question of a girly girl in a frilly dress with flowers in her hair, because even as she has grown to love the outdoors, grown to protect the things she cares about, grown stronger than Ruby in every measurable way, there is still a part of her who is the same girl when they first met, the girl who cried when Ruby hurt her.

Are you happy, she asks him. And Ruby — the boy who crushed flowers beneath his feet and who bled onto a girl’s dress and who figured out from a very early age that the people who were the easiest to hurt were the ones you cared most about — Ruby only looks away and hurts her one more time. Because from the very first time they met, Ruby has always been a coward, and she should’ve known better.


End file.
